A Thanhouser Company player, in 2 films you can watch free online.
Biography
Jeanne Eagels appeared in Thanhouser films in 1916 and 1917, before the stage stardom of her later career. Born in Boston in 1890 and raised in Kansas City, she had only a year and a half of formal schooling, and was acting in a Kansas City stock company by the age of 12.
Bowers notes that the story of her life is told in conflicting versions: the accounts published in her lifetime, and a later biography that revised many of them. Her entry in the encyclopedia sets out both.
A short summary written from the encyclopedia.Read Bowers’ full biography on this page ↓
Filmography
This has no online copy. Its page says what is known about where a print might be.
From the encyclopedia
From Volume III: Biographies of Q. David Bowers’ Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, reproduced with permission and unchanged. 7,006 words in 6 sections.
Jeanne Eagels appeared in Thanhouser films in 1916 and 1917.
The following paragraphs are based upon information derived from numerous newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and other contemporary sources. At the conclusion of the initial biography, excerpts are given from a revisionist biography written in 1930 by Edward Doherty in an article titled “Jeanne Eagels” (also published in book form as The Rain Girl).
According to accounts published in her lifetime, Jeanne Eagels, christened as Jeannine, was born in Boston on June 26, 1890, of an Irish mother and a Spanish father, Edward and Julia Sullivan Eagels. Her father’s surname originally was said to have been Aguilar, equivalent to “eagle” in Spanish, and it was misspelled in English as “Eagels.” From the age of two she spent her childhood in Kansas City, Missouri. In her entire life she had only a year and a half of formal education. Her father was an unrealistic idealist who always had trouble supporting his family.
When she was six years old, her father had the idea of sending her to an instructor for “parlor training,” in which she was taught dance steps, the recital of poetry, and the reading of simple scenes from plays. She later recalled that at the age of seven she was given the role of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, staged by her “parlor training” teacher. In another recollection, she named her first play as Hamlet.
Little Jeanne was fascinated by acting and decided to become an actress. At the age of 12 she was with the Woodward Stock Company in Kansas City, in the role of Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, later touring in The Outcast, East Lynne, Camille, The Great Pursuit, and other plays. Her first appearance in New York City was at the age of 17, in Jumping Jupiter, at the Lyceum Theatre.
Around this time, Jeanne Eagels married Maurice Dubinsky, who operated a traveling vaudeville tent show, and by whom she had a child. The marriage ended in divorce, and in 1911 she is said to have married actor John Barrymore. If so, little about the union ever appeared in print. The marriage is said to have ended in divorce about a year later. Her early marriages were soon forgotten and were not mentioned in the publicity, much of it unwelcome, she received when she became well known a few years later. (The Doherty biography dwells at length on the Dubinsky marriage but omits Barrymore.)
In October 1912 she essayed a two-line bit part as Olga Cook, with Billie Burke, in The Mind-the-Paint Girl, for which the producer, Florenz Ziegfeld, paid her $35 per week. Later she supported Julian Eltinge in The Crinoline Girl. She was on the stage in many plays with George Arliss, including The Professor’s Love Story, Disraeli, and Hamilton, the latter opening at the Knickerbocker Theatre, New York City, on September 17, 1917.
Seeking a diversion in 1914, Miss Eagels investigated motion pictures. In March of that year she was seen in the Reliance production of A Lesson in Bridge, in which she was listed as “Jeanne Eagle” in some notices (this information concerning her stint with Reliance is from film historian Anthony Slide). The next year she was in films under the management of Arnold Daly (whose productions were released through Pathé) and had a leading role in the December 1915 release, The House of Fear, in which Arnold Daly, Ina Hammer, Sheldon Lewis, Martin Sabine, Charles Laite, Charles Krause, and William Bechtel were also seen. While in films, she continued to act on the stage, and in November 1915 she was before the footlights in the role of Miriam in The Outcast.
In March 1916 Jeanne Eagels was on stage at the Shubert Theatre, New York City, in The Great Pursuit. In September 1916 she toured in the George V. Hobart comedy, What’s Your Husband Doing? On December 16, 1916, The New York News announced that Miss Eagels had been signed for a role in The Laughter of Fools, staged by the Charles Frohman Company.
Jeanne Eagels joined Thanhouser in August 1916. She was among Thanhouser’s roster of screen players through part of 1917, and appeared in The World and the Woman, Fires of Youth, and Under False Colors, working with Thanhouser on an intermittent basis. After finishing The World and the Woman, she went back to the stage.
The New Rochelle Pioneer, August 26, 1916, told of her coming to Thanhouser: “Miss Jeanne Eagels, one of the better known of the young actresses, has been signed by Edwin Thanhouser to be starred in the special feature production to be called The World and the Woman. The story was especially written for Miss Eagels by Philip Lonergan. Eugene Moore is directing the picture. Miss Eagels has been named by New York dramatic critics as one of the few young actresses who are destined to achieve great success in the coming season. Miss Eagels followed Elsie Ferguson in the leading role in Outcast last season and showed such ability that she was promptly signed by Joseph Brooks. Miss Eagels was a member of the all-star cast in The Great Pursuit and when she completes her engagement in New Rochelle she is to be featured by Mr. Brooks in a Broadway production.”
An article in The Moving Picture World, April 7, 1917, told of the success the actress had achieved in her first Thanhouser film: “Due to the success of her initial Thanhouser-Pathé feature, The World and the Woman, Mr. Edwin Thanhouser has engaged Miss Jeanne Eagels for further productions. Desiring to start work with her immediately, Mr. Thanhouser has made arrangements with the management of The Professor’s Love Story, which Miss Eagels is playing with George Arliss of the Knickerbocker Theatre, New York, to permit the actress to resume her studio work immediately. Mr. Frederick Warde has been assigned by Mr. Thanhouser to co-star with Miss Eagels.”
In late 1917 and early 1918 she was with the World Film Corporation in New York City and Fort Lee, New Jersey for a short time, and for that company appeared in minor roles, including work with the Peerless division. For World, she acted in The Cross Bearer, an eight-reel feature released in March 1918. Directed by George Archainbaud, the cast also included Montagu Love, George Morgan, Anthony Merlo, Edward Elkas, Charles Brandt, Eloise Clement, Albert Hart, Alec B. Francis, Kate Lester, Fanny Cogan, and Henrietta Simpson. Little about her work with World has ever appeared in print. The 1918 edition of the Motion Picture Studio Directory noted that she had blonde hair, a “blonde complexion,” and enjoyed horseback riding and swimming. She was 5’4” tall and weighed 120 pounds. Her natural hair color was brown but for much of her career she bleached it blonde. Her eyes were blue.
After Miss Eagels’ motion picture debut she remained active on the stage, telling a reporter that she could not decide which medium she preferred, therefore she would probably remain in both. In September 1918, the actress was on stage in Daddies, at the Belasco Theatre in New York City, which garnered mixed reviews. Then came roles in A Young Man’s Fancy and The Wonderful Thing, the latter opening at the Garrick Theatre, New York City, on January 25, 1920, later going to The Playhouse in the same city. In the late summer and autumn of 1920 she spent five months in Europe, to rest and regain her strength, following an illness.
In the Night Watch, with Miss Eagels in the role of Eugenie DeCorlaix, opened at the Century Theatre, New York City, on January 29, 1921. A review in The New York Clipper, February 22, 1921, stated that were it not for the splendid acting of Miss Eagels and one of her fellow players, Robert Warwick, the play could not remain long on Broadway.
In November 1922 she was seen under the management of Sam H. Harris at Maxine Elliott’s Theatre, New York City, in the role of Sadie Thompson in Somerset Maugham’s play, Rain, a part which brought her great fame and was performed on the road for the next several years. The Chicago Tribune, October 6, 1925, called Miss Eagels’ acting in Rain, at the Harris Theatre, something “to see, to laud, and long to remember.” In 1925, another company of Rain featured Miss Olga Lindo in the role of Sadie Thompson, a situation which caused some confusion with the public. Rain brought Miss Eagels great financial rewards as well, and from her earnings she purchased a large home in Ossining, New York, where she maintained a kennel of 30 dogs on a 29-acre farm.
On July 24, 1923, Frank J. Wilstach, a press agent, issued a release which related that in her spare time Miss Eagels had been studying the wages paid to stage players over the years and had compiled a list of important players of the previous century and the compensation they received. This mention in the 1920s of an intellectual pursuit was in sharp contrast to her other publicity, which mainly treated her acting or the problems of her personal life.
In December 1926, during rehearsals for her lead role in Chicago, Miss Eagels quarreled with the director and walked out. Efforts to discuss the situation with her at her home in Ossining were unfruitful. In March 1927 she was seen in Her Cardboard Lover at the Empire Theatre in New York City. In The New York Times, March 22, 1927, reviewer J. Brooks Atkinson said of her performance: “As the temperamental Simone, Miss Eagels has rather to create a part from the very lightest substance. Although extraordinarily thorough and concrete as a realistic actress, Miss Eagels lacks the style of scintillant comedy, and her conception of Simone in the current piece must be less than satisfying to herself.” In The New York World of the same date, Alexander Woollcott noted that after a shaky start, “Miss Eagels swept it away magnificently, playing several scenes with an almost fey charm and delicacy and plunging into the romp of the comedy with true comic spirit.” Gilbert Howard, in The New York Sun of the same date, detected some rough edges in the performance and expressed “hope for a polishing in the nights ahead.” Later, the play went on the road.
Jeanne Eagels’ private life was the subject of much gossip and comment in the 1920s. In March 1921 she was living in an apartment on the fifth floor of a building at 17 West 57th Street. New lessees, who wanted to remodel the structure, sought to buy the year and a half remaining on her lease and renewal option. When the actress would not respond to their offers, they made life difficult by altering the exits on the lower floors, by removing elevator service for periods of time, and other harassments. Miss Eagels countered by offering her lease for $25,000, but the building lessees refused, after which the actress obtained a court injunction forcing them to restore proper access to her apartment.
In early November 1923 the New York City papers carried reports that the actress would marry Whitney Warren, Jr., which both parties denied. At the time, Miss Eagels made her home at 168 East 61st Street in the city. On the evening of August 26, 1925 she secretly married Edward Harris (“Ted”) Coy, a former Yale Class of 1910 football hero, who was employed by a New York City insurance firm, Smythe, Sanford & Gerard, with offices at 68 William Street. The ceremony took place in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Reginald Venable, in Stamford, Connecticut. Mrs. Venable was known on the stage as Fay Bainter.
At the time, Coy, born in Andover, Massachusetts, May 24, 1888, was 37 years of age and had been divorced in Paris the preceding January 8th from his first wife, Sophie d’Antignac Meldrim Coy, whom he had married in Asheville, North Carolina on August 31, 1913. The first Mrs. Coy alleged desertion, and received custody of the couple’s two children. During the divorce proceedings, Coy’s name was linked romantically with Eagels. Coy was a man of means, having inherited about $300,000 from his mother several years earlier. Until November 1924 he was a member of the brokerage firm of Davies, Thomas & Co.
The marriage was rocky, and numerous reports of problems surfaced in the press. The December 26, 1926 issue of the New York Morning Telegraph stated that Dame Rumor was wrong again, and that contrary to ugly reports emanating from Chicago, Jeanne Eagels and her husband were quite happy and, in fact, were giving a big Christmas party. “It is indeed a regrettable fact that fame often breeds publicity that is cruel and sometimes not altogether true.”
In February 1928, Miss Eagels initiated divorce proceedings against Coy, charging cruelty. She alleged that her husband had mistreated her twice; first, on January 15, 1926, when he attacked her; and the second time, on November 4, 1927, when he struck her in the face with his fists, after which the couple lived apart. The actual suit was filed on June 29, 1928, in Chicago. In 1928, Coy married his third wife, Lottie Bruhn, of El Paso, Texas. On March 3, 1933, Coy filed for personal bankruptcy in United States District Court, listing liabilities of $13,872 and assets of just $730. A couple years later Ted Coy died at the age of 47 in New York Hospital.
On November 15, 1926, Miss Eagels leased a furnished apartment at 555 Madison Avenue for $3,150 per year. On January 1, 1929, she vacated the premises and refused to pay the remaining rent, after which she was sued for $2,400 unpaid rent by the landlady, Raydona Kuba. Miss Eagels’ actions on stage became increasingly erratic. Once, while in New York City, she interrupted a performance to leave the stage for a drink of water. On other occasions, she arrived from a few minutes to over an hour late for curtain time or, in the case of a performance for Her Cardboard Lover in Boston, she showed up several days after the scheduled opening. She was a victim of violent mood swings and was happy one day and sullen the next.
In mid-March 1928, a great scandal arose when she was due to play Her Cardboard Lover on the road in Milwaukee and St. Louis, but elected instead to neglect her $1,800 per week role, to remain with friends in Chicago and “make whoopee,” as an article in The Chicago Tribune, April 10, 1928, put it. The other personnel of the company were given a week’s salary and then told to return to New York City. Miss Eagels at first refused to discuss reasons for her non-appearance, but later stated that she was ill, adding that “a dozen doctors” could back up her claim. For the deed, the Actors’ Equity Association decreed that she be barred from the stage for a year and a half and fined her two weeks’ salary, an amount equal to about $3,600. Soon thereafter, she said that she would defy the Equity ruling and appear the next season in Carita. However, the punishment was sustained.
In the late 1920s Miss Eagels appeared in several films. In the November 1927 release of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s Man, Woman, and Sin she essayed the leading role of Vera Worth, the society editor for a newspaper. Others appearing in the picture included John Gilbert, Gladys Brockwell, Marc MacDermott, Philip Anderson, Hayden Stevenson, Aileen Manning, and Charles K. French.
During her forced hiatus from the footlights, Jeanne Eagels turned to motion pictures once again and was seen and heard in her first talking picture, The Letter, based on a play of the same name by Somerset Maugham, for which she was nominated for a 1928-9 Academy Award for Best Actress. Supervised by Monta Bell and directed by Jean DeLimur, the Paramount film was released in April 1929 and featured Miss Eagels in the lead feminine role, as Leslie Crosbie. Others in the cast included O.P. Heggie, Reginald Owen, Irene Brown, Herbert Marshall, Lady Tsen Mei, Tamaki Yoshiwara, and Kenneth Thompson.
This was followed by her second sound picture, Jealousy, also a Paramount production directed by Jean DeLimur, from a scenario by Eugene Walter (who years earlier was seen in a Thanhouser film). Jeanne Eagels essayed the leading feminine role, that of Yvonne, while others in the cast included Fredric March, Halliwell Hobbes, Blanche LeClair, Hilda Moore, Henry Daniel, Carlotta Coerr, Granville Bates, and Virginia Chauvernet. In the film, Yvonne is the owner of a gown shop bought for her by an elderly admirer, a fact she conceals from her husband, Pierre, a struggling artist.
The official Paramount publicity for Jealousy gave the impression that this was only the second picture of Miss Eagels’ entire career, and that the first was Man, Woman, and Sin, directed by Monta Bell, who later became a production executive with Paramount’s studio in Astoria, Long Island, New York. Her Thanhouser films were ignored. Miss Eagels was to have appeared in a third Paramount Famous Lasky film, The Laughing Lady, released in December 1929, but her participation was cancelled by her poor health. The leading feminine role, of Marjorie Lee, was played by Ruth Chatterton instead.
During the 1920s, Miss Eagels was in and out of hospitals and sanitariums many times, as she contended with what were described by the press as “illnesses.” Although she was treated at St. Luke’s Hospital, New York City, during the second week of September 1929, for eye ulceration caused by a sinus infection, most of her medical problems were due to alcoholism and drug addiction.
Late in the afternoon of October 3, 1929, Miss Eagels was stricken at her home at 1143 Park Avenue, New York City. She was taken by her maid, Christina Larson (who answered to the nickname ‘Stina), to a nearby private facility, the Park Avenue Hospital, at 591 Park Avenue. She was assigned to a private room under the care of Miss Jennie Hoglund, a nurse who happened to be on duty at the time. Edward Spencer Cowles, Jeanne’s doctor and person physician for nine years, who owned the facility, was out of the building and was summoned. A few minutes before seven in the evening, the face of the actress suddenly contorted, and then she collapsed, lifeless, across the bed. Dr. Alfred Pellegrini, assistant to the absent Dr. Cowles, was called for, but when he arrived there was nothing to be done.
Several hours later, the body was transferred to Campbell’s Funeral Church, 66th Street and Broadway, where Dr. Thomas A. Gonzales, deputy chief medical examiner, performed an autopsy which showed the cause of death as alcoholic psychosis. In a statement, Dr. Gonzales said: “Miss Eagels died of alcoholism. Not from acute alcoholism, but from alcoholic psychosis. She had been acting strangely for three or four days, but had taken no drink in two days.” Later, Charles Norris, chief medical examiner, stated that her death was not caused by alcoholic psychosis, as first thought, but from an overdose of chloral hydrate, a sedative and soporific. This finding was seconded by Alexander O. Goettler, toxicologist for the City of New York. Eight months later, Dr. Thomas A. Gonzales issued still another revision, stating this time that the actress had died from an overdose of heroin.
David Belasco, the well-known theatrical manager and producer, tried to paint a silver lining to the cloud, and in a statement published in The New York Post, October 5, 1929, commented: “I probably knew her better than most people here in New York. She had gone through many varied experiences.... As I remember the girl she was charming, sympathetic, kind, and gentle. She had been told that she was consumptive, but she led a quiet and sweet life. She had spasms of pain which caused her great concern; she wasn’t a bit like the temperamental star many probably thought her to be. She did not take a drink except when it was ordered by her physician, and this was necessary for her health. In the latter days of her life she did not drink for the pleasure of it. I shall always remember Jeanne Eagels as a splendid comrade, as a person who was good and generous to her friends, and as one who could not overcome a temperament that was no fault of hers.”
Miss Eagels’ body was on view at Campbell’s Funeral Church, in the Louis XIV room, where three years earlier the body of Rudolph Valentino, the romantic screen hero, had rested. A memorial service conducted on October 5th by Rev. James M. Gillis was attended by an estimated 300 to 500 people, including numerous stage and screen figures. The publicity given to the event attracted about 3,000 curiosity seekers, who could not be accommodated for the service but who filed past her bier before and after. Later, her casket was placed aboard the Twentieth Century Limited and sent over the rails to Kansas City for burial. Just before her death, she planned a comeback on Broadway and was studying a new play, Diana, based on the life of dancer Isadora Duncan, written by Irving Kaye Davis.
Jeanne Eagels was survived by her mother, who lived in Los Angeles; a sister, Helen, who lived in New York City; a sister, Mrs. W.K. Ackerly, who lived in Needles, California; and two brothers, George and Paul, who were residents of Los Angeles. Until a short time before Miss Eagels’ death, her father had lived with her in Ossining.
An article in The New York Times, October 7, 1929, stated that when she died, Miss Eagels was wearing $250,000 worth of jewelry, including a flawless pearl “as big as a penny,” valued at $100,000, a six-carat diamond ring worth $20,000, a wedding band set with seven diamonds, and two strands of pearls, one with 59 and the other with 52. In an article published the same day in The New York Sun the jewelry was valued at $300,000.
Miss Eagels’ life contained the ingredients from which titillating stories could be written, and beginning eight months after her death a biography, “Jeanne Eagels,” by Edward Doherty, was published in 15 instalments in Liberty magazine, and stated, among other things, that she was born in Kansas City, not Boston, that her father was not a Spaniard but was from Southeastern Pennsylvania, and that she was 11 years old, not seven, when she appeared on stage as Puck. Doherty’s biography is discussed in following paragraphs in the present work.
In 1933 her life was the subject of a play, Shooting Star. In 1957, Kim Novak portrayed her in a biographical film, Jeanne Eagels. Among Thanhouser “graduates,” Jeanne Eagels was one of the most prominent in later years. Many modern mentions of Miss Eagels have emphasized her alleged sexual promiscuity and the sensational circumstances surrounding her death.
An exposé article about the Body & Mind Clinic, operated by Dr. Edward Spencer Cowles on Park Avenue, appeared in the New York Sunday News, April 26, 1942, and pictured Miss Eagels as one of the alleged charlatan’s victims. His Park Avenue Hospital, established in 1919, catered to moneyed people with mental or nervous problems. Later, he opened the Body & Mind Clinic to serve “less opulent sufferers,” as the article put it. In one ritual described in the article, a long line of patients would pass a ticket-window type of dispensary, where each person would receive a cup filled with a brownish substance which the doctor stated was a mixture of chloral hydrate, bromide, and digitalis. With senses dulled, the patients would then be subjected to a “laying on of hands” by the doctor, after which they gathered in an auditorium to listen to a lecture and to hear testimonials.
Another “remembrance” of Jeanne Eagels achieved nationwide circulation in 1975, in Walter Scott’s column in Parade magazine: “Jeanne Eagels, portrayed on the screen in 1957 by Kim Novak, once charged an actor, Glenn Hunter, $3,000 for spending the night with her; but she was no prostitute. She explained that she was merely punishing Hunter for his expansive ego. John Wharton describes the incident in his recent book, Life Among the Playwrights.”
Note: Jean Eagels’ surname was frequently misspelled as “Eagles” in contemporary articles and publicity. Her name may have been Eagles to begin with (see following Doherty information), but in her professional life she used Eagels.
A highly dramatized biography of Miss Eagels, by Edward Doherty, was published in 15 instalments in Liberty magazine in 1930, under the title of Jeanne Eagels, and also later in book form as The Rain Girl. Written in a sensational manner to capitalize on the publicity surrounding her later life and her death, the initial installment was subtitled: “Genius and Drunkard—Artist and Hellion—Poet and Devil—She Battled to the Stars!”
It is obvious that Doherty did a great deal of research concerning Miss Eagels and had access to numerous people who knew her. However, much of his story is hearsay, and very few specific citations and references are given. Extensive “original dialogue” is given verbatim, relating in seemingly minute detail first-person accounts of incidents dating from Miss Eagels’ childhood onward. It must be presumed that nearly all such direct quotations are dramatizations created by the author.
The following paragraphs contain information from his story and are interesting to compare to “the other Miss Eagels” delineated in the preceding paragraphs of the present work. Doherty’s recitation of the “facts” concerning her work at the Thanhouser studio is convoluted and erroneous. It is probable that the “real” biography of Miss Eagels is a combination of what appeared in the press in her lifetime and what Doherty had to say the year after her death.
“Jeanne Eagels was not born in Boston. She was not born in 1894. She was not of Spanish and Irish blood. Nor was her father an artist and gambler. For that matter, her name was not Jeanne Eagels. The family name was spelled Eagles, and she was baptized Amelia Jean. She was born [in 1890] at 30th and McGee streets, in Kansas City, and the undertaker who buried her is the son of Mrs. Mellody, who bathed and dressed her when she was born. Jeanne was fond of telling new friends that her father’s name was Aguilar, that he was a Spaniard, and that he looked exactly like Antonio Moreno....
“Her father was Edward Eagles, the son of William Eagles, the last of a long line of Pennsylvania Dutch farmers. His mother was Emily Haley, born in Kentucky of Irish parents. Edward Eagles was a carpenter.... Jeanne’s mother, Julia, was one of the many daughters of Eugene Sullivan, who came out of the County Cork to Boston in 1845 when he was 19 years old.... Jeanne was the second child born to Edward and Julia Eagles. Edna was the first. Helen followed Jeanne. The boys came later, Leo, and George, and Paul.”
“Newspaper biographers of Jeanne invariably say that she was seven years old when she made her first appearance on the stage as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. She was actually 11. George Brown, mother of Evelyn Vaughn, Bert Lytell’s first wife, was the one who cast Jeanne for the part.... [When the play was performed], no paper mentioned Jeanne Eagels. Either no reviewer saw her in the part, or else they all thought it more charitable to leave her out.” Subsequently, Georgia Brown cast her in numerous other roles. Jeanne quit school at an early age, right after her first communion. She got a job in a store but soon quit or was fired.
At about the age of 15, she went to the office of Al Mackensen, a theatrical agent, who sent her to the Dubinsky brothers. By that time she had played roles in many stage productions, including in O.D. Woodward’s stock company in Kansas City. There were three Dubinsky brothers: Maurice, the oldest, Ed, in the middle, and Barney. The brothers toured with a production company around the Midwest, playing in theatres and tents. Jeanne went with them as a chorus girl and dancer, in a company comprising 22 people traveling in two train cars, one for personnel and the other for baggage. For six years she was with the Dubinsky brothers.
At one time or another, she was in Jumping Jupiter, The Crinoline Girl,The Mind-the-Paint Girl, The Outcast, The Great Pursuit, and The Professor’s Love Story. In 1918 she was on stage in New York City in Daddies, at the Belasco Theatre, after which she was seen in A Young Man’s Fancies, The Wonderful Thing, In the Night Watch (at which time she lived at 17 West 57th Street, having signed a long-term lease there; shortly thereafter the building was to be remodeled, Jeanne demanded $25,000 to vacate, but accepted $7,000), and My Lady’s Lips.
In 1922, Miss Eagels, relatively unknown, was cast for the part of Sadie Thompson in Rain, a play which was so successful that she played in it for five years. (Much of Doherty’s 1930 story is devoted to this play and the circumstances surrounding Jeanne Eagels’ part in it.) Later, she was in Her Cardboard Lover. Miss Eagels credited two men friends, Willard Mack and Clifton Webb, for her rise to stardom.
She was on the screen for Thanhouser in the filmed version of The Outcast (apparently a reference to the 1916 production, The World and the Woman). Doherty was very confused on her relationship with Thanhouser and named her as appearing with actors who never worked for the Thanhouser Film Corporation:
“And the fact that she was living in New York gave her the opportunity of returning to the moving picture studio in New Rochelle. Her first picture, the one made from the stage version of Outcast, had given the Thanhouser people a nice profit on their investment; and they were eager to have Jeanne make them other pictures and other profits.
“It meant long hours and hard work, but Jeanne was willing to spend her time and energy. She took over the house in Mamaroneck that had been owned by the unfortunate Kay Laurell and is now [in 1930] the property of the fortunate Ethel Barrymore. She rose early in the morning, motored into New Rochelle, worked all day with Harold Lockwood or Montagu Love or Earle Foxe, making pictures, and then drove into New York to give an evening performance of The Professor’s Love Story. She worked only half a day at the studio when she had to give a matinee.”
Apparently, Doherty meant the preceding to pertain to Eagels’ work with the World Film Corporation in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where the actress was for a short time in late 1917 and early 1918.
Then, in the mid-1920s: “She loved California. But the movies—she had no love for them. Movies, she believed, were made by stupid people. They hadn’t advanced much since the days when she had played parts for Thanhouser in New Rochelle and Larchmont and City Island and New York.” However, soon she was in front of the cameras in Hollywood.
While she was banned from the stage by Actors’ Equity in the late 1920s, she was with Paramount, for whom she signed a contract to produce three talking pictures: The Letter, Jealousy, and The Laughing Lady, for which she was to receive $200,000. At the time she sold her 29-acre farm near Ossining and bought another home in the same area. The first two pictures were finished, but Miss Eagels was not in a suitable physical or mental condition to complete the third.
Concerning her personality, Doherty said much: “She was explosive, mercurial, neurotic, sweet as an angel one moment—berserk as a fiend the next, contrite and ashamed when anger cooled, but timid of making amends. She hid her temperament, as she hid her pain, with a laugh and a smile. She talked fast. She gestured with her eloquent hands. She danced up to people, humming a song, and she danced away from them. She was always a sham, except with those she loved.”
“She was lonely all her life, and hungry for friends. But she could not afford them.”
“She hated most directors, most managers, most producers. She hated lies and liars, and though most of her life she lived a lie, yet it was seldom that she told one.”
She quarreled frequently with her stage managers and others with whom she was associated on the stage. Once she ordered Goodman Ace, dramatic critic of the Journal Post, thrown out of a theatre in which she was playing.
“’Nobody enjoys anything all the time [Miss Eagels was quoted as saying]. Sometimes I like it absolutely, sometimes I like it relatively. That is to say, sometimes I dislike it less than anything else I can think of. Sometimes—usually, perhaps—I have no feeling about it whatever. I do not find acting difficult. If I did, I should find something easier to do, and do it much better.”
“A physician in New York told her she might build up her resistance by drinking a little champagne every day. For a long while that was all Jeanne Eagels drank. And two or three sips would make her dizzy.”
“She drank, but neither to be sociable nor for the sake of drink. Sometimes she drank until she fell to the floor. Sometimes she went for months without taking a drop. She took drugs, but they were administered by a physician to dull her pain, or to awake from a dangerous lethargy.”
“It was in this house [a house in Mamaroneck, where she was staying while she was working in Thanhouser films, according to Doherty’s account] that Jeanne first learned of sedatives—to put her tired nerves to sleep, and stimulants—to make her tired body fresh and invigorated, and her weary mind bright and eager.”
In the mid-1920s “Jeanne drank, perhaps more freely than she ever had.” In California: “Now she drank whatever there was to drink, and did not seem to feel it until suddenly she fell to the floor.” Her body showed the effects of many needle punctures, which she said were administered by doctors in the course of her medical treatments.
Soon thereafter, she engaged in and lost a celebrated row with the Actors’ Equity Association, who banned her from the stage because of what were considered unjustified absences from performances. Although Miss Eagels did not deny that she was drinking a lot at the time, she said that this was not the reason for her absences; illness was.
Maurice Dubinsky, of tent show fame, whom she met when she was 15, was “short and ugly,” yet “there wasn’t a man, woman, or child in all the states the tent show traveled who didn’t know Maurice and like him.”
While on a tent show trip, “Jeanne sat with Maurice Dubinsky and cried in rapture over the prodigal beauties of nature...and squeezed Dubinsky’s hand. Dubinsky was an old man even then, and Jeanne was not yet 16; yet they loved each other, and before the spring had gone they took each other for better or worse.... Jeanne’s relatives, and some of her closest friends, deny vehemently that she was married to Dubinsky and that she bore him a child. Others with equal vehemence assert that she was both wife and mother. I have no records either of the marriage or of the annulment that is supposed to have ended it. I have no record to prove that a child was born. Yet there was a child, and to the best of my knowledge and belief he is still alive.
“Jeanne sent a wire from Excelsior Springs, Missouri, just before her 16th birthday, saying she was Mrs. Maurice Dubinsky now.” Later, she gave her friends details of her marriage and stated that her husband’s mother, a Jew, “hates me because I am a Catholic.” Later, a story was circulated that her baby died, but “the baby was not dead; perhaps he was merely ill.”
Apparently, the child was given away or taken from her. “She gave up her child, but she kept in touch with him always. She saw him as often as she could. She saw that he wanted for nothing.” However, by 1930: “The boy is a grown man, and although he has seen Jeanne Eagels many times, he believes her merely an old friend of his mother’s. The name Dubinsky means nothing to him. I don’t know that he has ever heard it.”
After she drifted away from Dubinsky, “she had no idea of repairing her matrimonial break. She was having too good of a time flirting with stage door johnnies.” She exploited such admirers, and accepted dinners, clothing, and other gifts from them.
She went to New York City and, with a roommate named Lois, “went hunting millionaires” by flirting in posh hotels like the Astor, McAlpin, Waldorf, and Knickerbocker. But their efforts were seemingly in vain. Finally, she met her first millionaire. “Jeanne did not care for him; but she accepted his gifts—thousands of dollars’ worth of gowns and jewels, consented to live in the apartment he furnished for her, let him pay for her maid and her automobile and her chauffeur.” He paid her way to Europe, where she stayed for over a year.
While on stage in 1920 in The Wonderful Thing, she became enamored of Thomas L. Chadbourne, a New York City corporation lawyer, who was a widower. They were frequent companions, but then Maxine Elliott intervened and by actions unspecified by Doherty caused Chadbourne to lose interest in the actress. Then she went abroad with an unnamed Italian millionaire, who was married and had children, who showered her with lavish gifts and set her up in an elegant apartment. “Many times, dining with him, she left abruptly and without explanation to keep a rendezvous with another man.”
During the time she was in Rain she met two new admirers: Whitney Warren, Jr. and Ted Coy. Coy was described as a college football hero who never matured past his gridiron days, although he was a member of a brokerage firm, Davies, Thomas & Co., and was married to the former Sophie Meldrim. He became Miss Eagels’ husband in an August 1925 ceremony at the home of Fay Bainter. “But their marriage was a catastrophe for both.” She treated him with disdain, but he continued to love her. He induced her to buy a 29-acre farm in Briarcliff Hills, near Ossining, New York, where the couple lived. They subsequently divorced.
Whitney Warren, Jr. was the son of the architect who planned the Louvain Library in Belgium, was a member of the social set, and at one time was engaged to marry Miss Geraldine Miller Graham, whom the Prince of Wales called “the most beautiful and charming girl in America.” Warren’s engagement to Miss Eagels was announced in the papers, although neither Warren nor Eagels had issued any such statement, but they didn’t deny it, either. Whitney Warren’s parents were livid with rage and stated their son would never marry an actress. After a while, the romance faded.
While she was being courted by Warren and Coy she became attracted to another man, who was married, and whose wife employed detectives to spy on the couple with binoculars from an opposite window as they cavorted in Miss Eagels’ apartment. However, it turned out that her lover’s wife also was carrying on an affair—with a Wall Street magnate. An anticipated scandal thus ended in a stalemate.
The Prince of Wales visited Miss Eagels and watched her on stage, but the actress was quoted as saying, “They tell me he is not such a hot lover. Maybe he isn’t. He doesn’t have to be, and that’s the pity of it. But it would be kind of cute to hold him in your arms and bite the tip of his ear, wouldn’t it?”
Another great love, this one of the sweetheart variety rather than the between-the-sheets kind, was Barry O’Neill (not to be confused with the early Thanhouser director, Barry O’Neil, who died in 1918), who was in the Her Cardboard Lover company with Miss Eagels in the 1920s.
“She had many lovers, but no great loves. There was no passion in her. There was a spiritual, an unphysical quality, in the love she felt for any man.”
“She made millions of dollars, and spent them or gave them away. Many women have known as dire poverty as she. Few have known such luxury. Fewer still have been so poor, and have cared so little for luxury when it came. She never hoarded money. She despised those who did. She spent days eluding her creditors. Yet she paid the rent for many a needy friend. ‘If I have thirty cents when I die,’ she once said, ‘it is thirty cents too much.’”
“Jeanne made perhaps $2,000,000 in her life, but she could not hang on to any part of it. She made $250,000 in the market in three days, and dropped it all before the week was out.”
Doherty relates that shortly before her death, she left her home in Ossining, visited a speakeasy, then “loaded her car with liquor, and was driven to her apartment in Park Avenue, New York.” Jeanne went to the city, then went to see her physician, Dr. Cowles.
She died shortly after leaving her Park Avenue apartment to visit Dr. Cowles. The Doherty narrative gives no details of Cowles’ establishment.
At the viewing in the funeral parlor, held in the same place where “thousands and thousands stood outside waiting their turn to pass the bier” of Rudolph Valentino, a sharp contrast was seen when Miss Eagels’ body lay there: “Nobody breaks windows to see Jeanne Eagels. There are but a few close friends, a few curiosity seekers, a few who come that their names may appear in tomorrow morning’s papers.”
Bowers’ own filmography list is left out here: the filmography above lists the same films. Cite as: Bowers, Q. David. Thanhouser Films: An Encyclopedia and History, “EAGELS, Jeanne.” thanhouser.org/research/people/jeanne-eagels/
